My CPU Usage is Spiking Every Second!

rambo244

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Sep 8, 2013
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EDIT: I just completley quit of of skype as I was watching my Performance Tab CPU Usage, and when I did close skype Completely the spiking Completly stopped! and my CPU usaged dropped to about 3-4% and no lagg or freeze or anything!!!!.... I even surfed the web, and put a livestream on.. and a youtube video, and I had no problem the CPU usage is perfect..staying at around 1-10% So what is up with this skype???? I would still like to have it on my PC, any thoughts???

EDIT #2: I just restarted Skype to see if it would start making my CPU usage spike... but it didn't.. and i've had it open for a few minutes even msg'd somebody on it, and no spike on the CPU Usage.. I currently have it running along with a youtube video and live stream... and the CPU usage is perfectly fine... stable at around 3% raising and falling slightly... and memory is stable at 2.71GB's atm...
This is quite weird...I've shut down my PC this past week several times and restarted it..with the problem re occurring..Skype is a program on my PC that starts automatically when the PC turns on...


Hey guys, I built my PC 2 years ago (next month), have had absolutely no problems with it. However this past week I have noticed my PC would be "laggy" / "freezing" acting weird.. "delayed"... In terms of while Im typing this, I need to wait a few seconds for the text to appear, and the cursor to move...

I have run a full system scan, also checked in the Processes tab in Task manager for any suspicious processes which I didn't find any of....

I have nothing buy my web brower open atm and I'm looking at the Performance tab and the CPU Usage is spiking Constantly (every second) up and down all the way.. my memory is stable at about 2GB's of usage currently.. (out of my 8 available)..

My build includes these items:
Powercolor HD 7950 / Z87-G45 gaming motherboard/ 750G NEX EVGA PSU/Water 2.0 PRO/i5-4670k intel CPU

As for software I run on Windows 7, and I don't even need to be playing a game for it to spike it just does it even with just a web browser open..

Please let me know, if there is anything that you guys can think of!... I need help asap! Thanks ;)
 

akseli

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Do you have a USB based sound card, together with Skype it might be causing DPC's that could cause such constant sort time freezing. If not, it could be anything else, but something that Skype accesses. USB Wifi box?

When/if you get the same problem, try unpluging USB devices one by one. If the spikes are consistent, and you find something that makes it stop, it's that.
 

rambo244

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Thanks for your response...
So far it is the skype program that is making my CPU spike.. it started happening today once again, so I quit out of skype and wa-la.. my CPU stabilized and has been good for hours....

I have an amp/dac that is connected to my PC via usb
I also have a mouse/keyboard via usb
I lastly have a wifi tp-link connected via usb (however my comp is hard wired to the modem and this wifi adapter is only just incase of anything... so it's not really serving a fuction right now, just a back-up i guess...

Remember I've had this exact setup for the past nearly 2 years now... and I have not changed a thing about it.. (besides maybe an update to skype?)

No hardware change or anything...
 

akseli

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No it's hardware or it's drivers actually doing that. Skype is just the program that access it. Try next time to disconnect the DAC. I think it's probably it.

As for why it has started to happen. Well upgrades may change things that could bring some kind of compability problem with drivers. Upgrades in Windows, drivers or Skype.
Also USB connectors and cables aren't forever. Specially if you have any extension cords, they may wear out and cause data errors, which forces the USB bus to resend data, and that would cause the driver to stay longer in kernel mode, which causes slight stuttering.